It was interesting watching how well Sidney Crosby was feted recently in his hometown and home Province. Somehow, the losers have not caught him in their claws and started to drag him down. Not yet, anyway. I wonder when it will happen to the extent that we notice it. It was fun to see Don Cherry blow his mouth off about Sid the Kid a few years ago, and promptly watch all his Atlantic Canada Grapevine restaurants go tubing. That really put him on the warpath, resulting in a measurable increase in the use of MUTE buttons during intermission on HNIC in Atlantic Canada.
But you see, Don Cherry has a few things right. He venerates the success of "our own boys". We here in Nova Scotia seem to do the opposite. When someone actually succeeds, we drag them back down to our level. And we do it on both personal and institutional levels.
We simply have too many government and regulatory agencies where the main required skill set, the most important use of imagination, is to come up with ways to stifle the innovation and industry of others. And to make sure that no one else has any fun, because those who have inherited the responsibility of regulating things that really don't need to be regulated any more, don't know how, or are afraid to have fun. Or their god tells them we should all be unhappy. It is as if there is an assumption that they are as worthy of success as anyone else, despite the differing effort, and therefore no one else has the right to do better than them, and must be brought down to their level.
How else can we explain the total bullshit that Damien Byrne is going through with the Split Crow? How else can we explain the Kafkaesque world that homebrew retailers are being pushed into, where not just alcohol, but everything that yeast can digest is now under the jurisdiction of the NSLC and Liquor Licensing Board? Why is that law still there?
How can we explain the continued existence of the NSLC retail monopoly - an organization that would be out of business so fast all you would hear would be the loud sucking sound of the vacuum created by the absence of the multitude of bureaucratic layers being flushed, if real market competition to it existed. Or, should I say, were allowed to exist. In the short time available, tiny Bishops Cellar has put a noticeable dent in the NSLC's urban restaurant business. This from only one outlet. It would be interesting if they were allowed to be a real business and expand to serve their market in a free world.
Other examples of government inefficiency exist, of course (NS Environment in particular), and it may seem that I am picking on the NSLC, but, well, the name of this blog implies discussion of matters of drink.
I do find it hilarious how the NSLC applies, or self nominates, for retail awards. They are just like African dictators winning elections with 100% majorities. They don't get it. How can you be a successful retailer, and win awards, when you have no real competition, because you, or your owner, controls things such that you have no real competition? I'd win the Olympic sprint medal if no one else ran. Well, maybe. I think you do have to finish.
The point is, there are people in this, and other government, or pseudo-government organizations who view their job descriptions as saying no to new ideas and new products, and who are married to the status quo. They are the "not fail" crowd. If you don't try, you can't fail. There are people who use their position of "authority" to exercise personal opinion and vendetta (or even power!!) instead of allowing others to simply do business. This, when the reality is that to best serve the public interest, which is what they are supposed to be there for, often the very opposite behaviour is required. There ARE things in the NSLC that work, and reasons why I think we need them (more in a later blog) but the NSLC, the UARB, the CRTC, the HDBC and many other "control the people" boards or organizations are simply no longer needed in their current form.
The question we have to ask ourselves is whether we want the status quo, the do nothing scenario, to triumph. Because if they do, we are left, by definition, on the sidelines, catcalling and holding back our own economy, denigrating our winners, and slowing morphing into nothing more than spectators, continuing this practice of social entropy by dragging everything down to one level.
This may well be the "Nova Scotia way". A content mediocrity, going nowhere, and not fast. Sidney, best stay in Pittsburgh.
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